I dreamt my brother was alive. It seemed to me that I had to protect him from unhappy things, or he would kill himself, and this thought came to me after I found a stack of rifled-through old math tests of our other brother, and I thought the younger would be unfavorably comparing himself (though he was the one with better scores in life). At a table set outside in the dark, our other brother told the younger his fish was gone, my hope fell, I had been hiding this knowledge from him in the years he was away, but then the fish came back, a blue-green thing called Bubbles, as large as a Saint Bernard, that looked like a sea monster from an old map, and it could move around out of water, and was flopping and flapping with happiness at seeing my brother, I felt relief, he might not kill himself over this.

And I had a stupid, unhappy dream about the damn TV show The Office, I was Pam and had gotten involved in a relationship with Michael Scott, which was being repeated, looping back on itself, hints of Groundhog Day but with less clear endings, I suppose like reruns of the same episode but the plot isn't always the same and there's lingering memory of past runs. I had been joking at first, and the thing usually ended with me breaking his heart once he caught wind, or sometimes I was gentler and gave him reason why he could feel disappointed with me and end it himself with some dignity, but then came a time I decided to keep him, because he was sweet and he was someone, and I felt I was committing a wrongness against fate but I had this deep unnatural almost-Biblical cleaving-to feeling of wanting to just hold him, we were in a taxi and I held him after playing the situation with the right words that would mean he would love me, I had my cheek to his shoulder and he whispered, in a very Michael Scott way, gentle coaxing, absurd, do you think we should end this, or something like that, and I thought, no, no, this is the time when he loves me and I keep him, but he ended it even with me saying the right things, offering him what he wants, he ended it and I sobbed, I was in a Kmart sobbing, I crawled on the floor weeping.
I woke up this morning with snow in the air and saw a crow take wing from the brick wall outside my window. I’ve got a bit of a cold that won’t let go, so it’s more Emergen-C, Ban Lan Gen tea, chicken soup, and truckloads of water. I need to call my surgeon with a question, but oh, how I dread the telephone. I’m trying not to be afraid of the month of January and what’s in it, and what may come after it, I am trying to be easy on myself and my fate.